8. Unsatisfied Wishes and Sublimation - Square Circles Publishing

SOURCE 8: THE MIND AT MISCHIEF
To do a thing according to rules or
regulations is always to some extent a
sublimation.
Pugnacity may also be sublimated into
competition in school examinations.
It may be expressed in writing polemical
pamphlets, or in a political campaign (Br
380).
In these various sublimations the subject
lives out his pugnacity and at the same
time conforms to the social order in
which he lives (Br 380).
To do a thing according to rules is always
to some extent a sublimation.
Pugnacity may also be sublimated into
competition in school examinations and
athletic contests.
It may be expressed in the combat of
political campaigns.
In these sublimations the subject lives out
his pugnacity, and at the same time
conforms to the social order in which he
lives.
I : I N T R O D U C T I O N : S O M E
PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY,
NORMAL AND ABNORMAL (Conklin
3)
Anger becomes righteous indignation;
mere sex passion is transformed into
romantic and marital love;
the impulse to torture others becomes the
harmless teasing or joking of maturity (C
20).
Our anger is up-stepped to a higher form
of resentment called righteous
indignation;
our bestial sex impulses are advanced to
the more glorified phases of romantic
courtship and marital devotion;
our early and barbaric instincts of torture
and cruelty become transmuted into our
comparatively harmless proclivities of
teasing, bantering, and joking.
Thus are our early and inhuman urges
finally transmuted into our play-life and
civilized humor.
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